It took
Apple two
years to implement copy/paste on its iPhone (the feature was
first released in 2009 with the availability of iOS 3.0).
Today, Apple's implementation is widely regarded as the gold
standard, as it is accessible throughout the interface and relatively
easy to use. Android, by contrast, has copy/paste, but it's not
accessible in some parts of the interface (e.g. emails, messaging)
and it's somewhat clunky.

Still Android is far better off than
Windows Phone 7 in its current state, which has no copy/cut/paste.
Along with the lack of multitasking and hot-swappable storage, this
missing feature was widely
maligned by Windows Phone 7 critics.

The platforms
advocates, including its growing legion of developers preached
patience. "It's just taking the time to do things right, "
they said.

Well that looks to be the case. In the
Windows Phone 7 build 7.0.7338.0 (current release version is
7.0.7004.0), released first to developers with Samsung Taylor's,
copy/cut/paste is not only fully working, but is easy to use.

In
most of the core apps mail, IE, Word, etc you tap a word to highlight
it. Once highlighted, arrows appear on either side of the word,
that can be used to include more words. An icon appears above
the selection that allows it to be copied to the clipboard. In
messaging and some other apps, getting to the selection process is a
bit trickier, but still reasonable. You first have to
long-press a particular message. Then you get a hidden menu
that includes the option to start making a copy selection.

Once
you've copied your desired text, pasting automatically appears as an
icon option in the top row of your keyboard.

It appears at
present that cut is not directly implemented, but you can likely
simply delete your selection after copying it, to essentially perform
a cut. Also unknown is whether the clipboard can stored a
history of copied items.

Individual letters within words can't
be copied without copying the whole word. This is a bit
disappointing, but is perhaps a necessary evil to port copy/paste in
quick to use form from the desktop world to the touchscreen
world.

With the feature apparently complete, it shouldn't be
long before Microsoft's rumored copy/paste update to the Windows
Phone 7 masses rolls out in finished form. That update is
rumored to and in January and also unlock
third party multitasking. With copy/paste in hand,
Microsoft may have one mean competitor on its hands, given the fact
that its graphical
user interface is arguable the most innovative out of the
RIM/iOS/Android/WP7 mix.

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Apple didn't have a new version of the OS just because of that. It was only one of many new features. Apple just prefers to do one major new release a year, rather than doing what Google does, which is to come out with a number of new releases a year. That makes a mess of the situation for manufacturers, carriers, and users, because there are so many versions floating around, with new devices coming out with outdated versions of the OS which don't get updated for months, if at all.

But MS is behind in this now, and so they want to get it out there as soon as possible. I don't blame them, as they've been criticized for it, and it could be one reason the phones don't seem, according to reports, to be selling well.

What i want to know is why so much weight and attention gets put on version numbers. They are completely arbitrary and mostly meaningless except that to note that one product is newer than another. you could just as easily call a product 2.0 as you could 1.5 and they could be the SAME product. This is no different then apple calling the new osx 10.6 instead of 11.0. The features are implemented now and the "version number" is irrelevant. I swear, sometimes i think people are just looking for reasons to whine.

melgoss just so you know, this post is not in reference to anything you particularly said. your post just happened to be in what looked like a good place in the chain of posts (near the end of a "branch") and so in order to sort of "reply" to the entire line of whining over version numbers i placed it here. I mean no offense to you and regarding your post i agree. I am simply glad the feature is there now and if they get 3rd party multitasking right and make a Verizon win 7 phone then I'll go out and pick one up (as long as it's as good as or better than the Omnia 7, but I'm a huge Omnia fan so that's only natural).

7 is the operating system, .0 is the "release" or equivilent, and .7338 is the build number. For instance, Windows 2000 is Windows 5.0. XP is 5.1, XP64 is 5.2 Vista is 6.0 and Windows 7 is actually Windows 6.1. The .0 is a release, not an update.